Without the Label-er Who Are You? - 31st October 2017

The beauty of what I'm sharing is that even if you consider yourself to be the body, this one, the ego, is still not there. The one who cares about a relationship, the one who cares about money, and the same one who cares about freedom—oh, so I see that the body identification actually, although it is not true from my direct experience, but actually it is much-maligned. Even if you considered yourself just the body, you would not have all this trouble. It is because you consider yourself, you know, not the body. The same one that is the owner of the money, the same one which is the owner of the relationship, and the same one who is the seeker of freedom—that one is the trouble. And that one is just imaginary. Keep searching for it.

So if this is seen, then you say, 'Okay, that one is imaginary. Which one is real? If that one is imaginary, how can I find the real me?' Now, if you are looking for a solid definition of real, can it be something which is changing? Changing all the time? If this wall, I was painting it black, blue, yellow, green every day—it was changing—and then someone was saying, 'What is really the color of the wall?' what would be the answer? None. So it must be the unchanging one that we can call real. If God itself were changing all the time, then how could you find that? So the search is for that which is unchanging because we are looking for stability.

What is the trouble? The trouble is that we've had various beliefs about ourselves and they have been changing, so we are not finding stability. We've had various ideas about how much money I should have, which partner I should have, how should I live my life. But if you had one consistent idea, you would have just got that and be happy. So these ideas keep changing. So nothing in the phenomenal world shows stability. And yet, it is not an alien concept. If I tell you this is a coloring book, let's see what is unchanging. What could be it in phenomena? Have you had the experience of that? Something deeper, as a 'me-ness' about this unchanging. And usually, you come to satsang because you are tired of attaching to that which is changing. You attach to that which keeps changing, or the idea about what you wanted itself changed, so that causes suffering. So we come to satsang because we got tired of the change and we are looking for that which is unchanging.

Now, this is an exploration to see whether there is something which is unchanging or not. So it's a real-life exploration. It is not... we can have various hypotheses. I can propose something which you learn mentally just by the answer. So I'm glad you're doing this question. Do you think that you... I say that you are awareness, but it is my experience, it doesn't seem like it is my experience. So this is what we are checking. So it seems like the longing now is to find that which is unchanging because we are done with that which is changing. It gives so much suffering, so we want to now go beyond that.

Let's have this exploration. This is exactly what we were doing. The basket metaphor, although it's a simple one, it's extremely powerful. Worldly things are changing, always changing. Thoughts are changing, emotions are changing. What witnesses all of this? The same one which has witnessed many bodies. This which we call the waking body, that you call the dream body—the same one had that dream body which has not a single cell in common with this one. What is that? Now, the thought will bring knowledge to you if you bring something which you think is scientific or something like this, but we are going beyond that and staying with our direct experience. What can we say about this state? This which we call the waking state, is it a constant? It's not constant. It's not constant.

Now, will this body be able to escape this waking state and join you in your dreamless sleep? That's the question. The fact is that as you come to dreamless sleep, is there anything there, including this body? Who knows this? If there is nothing there, then who would be there to know that there is nothing? That itself must be not a thing. If there is no thing there, then that which witnesses that there is nothing there must itself not be a thing. So if you say that 'I had a waking state, I had a dream state, I had sleep,' still you would have to be the constant through the states because you say 'I had this, I had this, I had this.' So you are the one constant.

The waking state takes everything that the waking state has and goes away. The dream state comes and all this entire world can appear, and then when the dream state goes, everything in that goes. And then the sleep state comes where there is nothing, and yet you remain, but not as a thing. Now, when the waking state came, did you become a thing? It's very important. We are not presuming anything, we're just checking. So from this 'no-thing,' all things have come. And you know, you can say it seems like I get enthused in that. So all of this is made up of me, and yet that which is fully full, in spite of the appearance of this manifest fullness, nothing happens to that. What you are in your sleep state is not affected by the dream. This waking state, what you are is unaffected by the appearance of the dream state also. All these states are changing, coming and going.

Now, so what will happen is that when this... what is this mind which tries to tell you that you are just an object of the waking state? Actually, you saw that the entire state came from within you. It is your own power which is manifesting as this waking state. But this voice will come and tell you that, 'No, no, the waking state is not in you; you are an object in the waking state.' Now, without that, we will see that all of this... there is no separate, there are no two. That's right. Is there a qualitative or quantitative difference between a dream and that which we are calling the waking state? Actually, there is only one dream state, or we can say it's just that this seems so intimate and real that we hesitate to call it a dream. It's okay, we don't have to force that.

The point is, though, the main point in the beginning is that even in this waking state, when I look for the one who could have the problems about any relationships, even health of the body, if you do not find... and if you do not find that one, then we see that it is just being a... we give an idea, a belief. But right now you are empty of that belief. This moment you are empty of even that belief. Now you're thinking about it. God is God, or God can use it to start to pretend. Now will you say that even this appearance is me? Now I am that full, so everything that comes must also be me. There is nothing else. There is only awareness. In that which we call the sleep or deep sleep state, there is no thing there. If that is the substance of everything, then if something comes, what must that something be made up of? The same.

So whether it is the manifest aspect which is experienceable in a way, that also must be made up of the same awareness. Correct. So just because something is moving—it is because the finger is moving—doesn't mean that it ceases to be the hand. It is still the hand. So it is awareness itself, the Self itself, which is manifesting itself as consciousness, which usually we use the label of. Now it is this Saguna Brahman, the manifest aspect of the Self which we call consciousness. So this consciousness is what is the Self alone, but it has a qualitative feel as if it is manifesting 'I Am.' Now, 'I Am' is neutral. What is the root of all trouble? 'I Am' is Atma, consciousness. But you are saying that 'I am the James Bond character.' But actually, you are not going to seek that. The entire game came from within you. And the play not only came from within you, it continues to bubble around in your own being.

But within this there comes this very independent set of sensations called the body, intimate set of sensations, or thoughts. And we've taken this set of sensations and made a theoretical construct called the body-mind, which we call the ego or the person. It's just a theoretical construct. All these sensations are independent; they just have one cause, which is consciousness. They discharge from consciousness and in consciousness, and are made up of consciousness. There is only consciousness. And yet in the appearance, consciousness has given itself the ability to take these constructs and make a notion. Like there is no sky. We have a theoretical notion of sky. But is there something real like the sky? There is no sky. It's a construct which is made up of that space in which clouds can be there, that space in which we can see the stars, but there is no substance like the sky. In the same way, there is no substance like the person. It is just a theoretical notion, the ego. It is a theoretical construct. There is in fact no mind that exists. We've taken this set of sensations, thoughts, imagination, memories, and put it together into one political notion called mind. In fact, you know, there is no such thing as the body. We've taken all of these various sensations—leg sensation, hand sensation—and we have one collective construct and visual sensation which seems to have this continuity, and put it into one construct called the body. But all is only consciousness. It's just like this dream sleep will become a body. It's not actually... exactly.

So now that is where the Sages have given us these clues. They have seen through this Maya, this realm of the changing, and come to that discovery of the truth and then said, 'Okay, look, everyone needs some clues.' So what are the scriptures? What is the heart of a Pranam? It's a set of clues. How do you find this? Because actually, directly you cannot point to it. I cannot take you to that which is out of space by pointing this way in space or pointing that way. That means I have to take you beyond space. So then that 'beyond space' itself becomes a clue; it becomes a pointer. I cannot tell you that which is timeless by telling you that you will find it in the future or you had it in the past. I have to take you beyond time. But I cannot take you phenomenally beyond time. I can just point to your source. Where does even this consciousness come from? Is that beyond time and space somewhere?

So these clues are to be used like this. What in this waking state stops me to verify what you say? It is the habit of going with our conditioning. That is why we have such a great deal to take—that habit of conditioning which reinforces the idea 'you are a person, you are a person, you're a person.' This is your ego, this is your life, this is what you should do, you have to be like this, you have to do like this. This constant commentary is on. And our predisposition has become that we believe this commentary. We need to have the opposite of that also, which is pointing you to your timeless nature, to your spaceless nature, and reminding you that when you really search, you don't find the one that the mind is talking to.